Scorecard

" Mr. Liston," he said, "you stay away from this man, will you?"

"Yes, sir," Sonny replied.

"And you, Mr. Martin," the judge went on, "don't get in his way, either."

MISERY IS A FOOTBALL GAME

These are not happy times for Mal Florence, football writer for the Los Angeles Times. He has come to dread road trips. Since taking over the beat, he has seen the Rams win only three away games, tie two and lose 33. In 1963, when Mal was recuperating from a car accident, another man covered three road games. The Rams won two of the three.

Florence also is an ardent USC fan, and he was distressed when he was assigned to cover the Stanford-California game the same afternoon his Trojans battled UCLA for the Rose Bowl bid. Dutifully he sat in the Stanford stadium press box, but his heart and ears were tuned to a transistor radio report from Los Angeles. After UCLA won, in the last two minutes, he sadly packed up his typewriter and trudged to the elevator, where he was reminded that he was there for the Cal-Stanford game. Mal had to return sheepishly to his seat, unpack his typewriter and write a game story in the noble tradition of The Show Must Go On.

NO MORE SNOW JOBS

Snow reports from New England ski resorts are being reformed. The old reports, consisting mostly of the words "poor," "fair," "good" or "excellent," were at best subjective and at worst an inducement to slant the weather news heavily in the resorts' favor. The new system is designed to be factual rather than promotional. A typical twice-daily report might look like this: "Blue Mt.—14/24 PG/PP 1/8." That means the average minimum base-snow depth is 14 inches on lower elevations, 24 inches on upper elevations; lower surface conditions are a combination of packed powder and granular, upper conditions exclusively packed powder; new snow accumulation is one inch on lower slopes, eight inches on upper. Had there been any precipitation—whether snow, sleet or rain—it would have been noted at the end.

We applaud the innovation, of course, but deep inside we feel a small regret that one more element of excitement has gone out of our standardized civilization ("Hey, George, does 'good' mean that the rocks are still showing, or is that 'fair'?").

PHILLY FLAKES
American League teams have found the perfect way to dispose of their "flaky" baseball players: trade them to Philadelphia and let Gene Mauch worry about them. Last year it was Dick Stuart and Bo Belinsky; this year, so far, it has been Phil Linz and Jackie Brandt. What is a "flake"? Says Brandt, an expert in the field, "It's a guy that's..." and then he took his forefinger and made an airy circle near his temple. Brandt once told a former Baltimore manager, Billy Hitchcock, "I'm going to play with harder nonchalance this year." Stuart threw a bowling ball through a picture window one night when he was locked out of his home. Belinsky once said: "I regret I can't sit in the stands and watch me." And Linz, of course, is the famed harmonica player. Now, if they could get Dizzy Dean to broadcast.